


You Can't Keep Secrets from Your Roommate

by mosylu



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Caitlin is terrible at keeping secrets, Cisco would have figured it out except he's keeping the same one, F/M, roommates au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-01
Updated: 2018-09-01
Packaged: 2019-07-05 06:53:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15858477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mosylu/pseuds/mosylu
Summary: Cisco always thought the reason his roommate broke up with her last boyfriend was because she didn't want to do long-distance. But then he discovers the real reason was that Caitlin was in love with someone else.But who?





	You Can't Keep Secrets from Your Roommate

Texting about his plans for the evening, Cisco unlocked his front door and twisted the knob. It stuck under his hand, and he looked up from the phone. “What the - ”

He rattled the knob, which steadfastly refused to turn. Then he realized that it had been unlocked to begin with, and he’d locked it again.

He also realized there was a little blue car in his driveway.

He grinned.

He unlocked the door and went into the house. A purse sat on the hall table, a coat heaped on the floor under it. In the living room, a woman in dark blue scrubs sprawled facedown on the couch, dead to the world.

“Dear god,” he said loudly. “There’s a strange woman in my house.”

She didn’t stir.

“What? Can it be? My long-lost roommate? She does look a little like Caitlin … ”

She let out a snore.

He shook his head fondly. “Dork.” He reached over her and pulled the deeply ugly crocheted blanket off the back of the couch, spreading it over her.

She stirred, snuffling like an adorable little piglet, and blinked her eyes open. “Cisco?”

“For that you wake up?”

She yawned. “What are you doing home so early?”

“Check the time, Sleeping Beauty.” He held his phone out.

Her eyes widened. “Oh, I fell asleep.”

“Sure as hell did. So they let you out of the salt mines?”

She yawned again and pushed herself to a sitting position, rubbing her neck. “Ow. Yes, I’m off until tomorrow evening.”

She was doing her residency at a local hospital. Cisco had been gobsmacked when she’d told him that eighty-plus hour weeks were commonplace, even expected. But he’d gotten used to barely seeing her except on her way out the door or on her way to bed.

Not that he liked it. But he’d gotten used to it.

“Whoa, seriously?” he said. “Twenty-four whole hours of freedom? What are you going to do with that?”

“Laundry and cleaning tomorrow,” she said. “But tonight, Netflix. Lots of Netflix.”

“Sweet.” He dropped onto the couch next to her. “Want company?”

“Oh, Cisco, it’s Friday night.” She paused. “It is Friday night, right?”

“Yep.”

“So, I’m sure you have plans to go out. You always do.”

He pushed his phone into his pocket as it buzzed with a text from Barry about which bars they were going to hit. “Actually, this week has thrashed me too.”

She looked skeptical. “Really?”

“Yeah. I mean, I didn’t save anybody’s life or get drenched head to toe in bodily fluids like some people on this couch, but there was this big project due and my boss was riding us hard. I’m in serious need of unwinding.”

That was all true, although up until five minutes ago, his plan for unwinding had included shots, dancing, and maybe making out with someone cute in a darkened club. But he tossed that plan without a second thought

“Besides, when was the last time we had a roomie TV night?”

“Months,” she said.

And that was why.

When he’d first met Caitlin, as one-half of the couple who’d wanted to move into the spare room he’d advertised on Craigslist, he’d thought she was sweet but shy and not really his type of friend. He’d clicked much more quickly with Ronnie, her boyfriend, and been more than happy to sign on the dotted line with him. Caitlin had come as part of the package. He’d been okay with that because just looking at her, he knew she was the type to pay rent scrupulously on time and never leave her dishes in the sink.

But within a few months, he’d figured out that she was sharp and sweet and funny and smart as hell. She’d quickly become his friend in her own right, not just as Ronnie’s girlfriend.

After Ronnie had been killed by a drunk driver, their senior year of college, it had never crossed his mind to have her move out, and as far as he knew, she’d never thought of it either. This was her home.

People thought it was weird sometimes - mostly women he dated, or biphobic guys. They just couldn’t understand how you could share a house for this long with someone you weren’t banging.

“She’s like my sister,” he told them, which wasn’t _exactly_ true, but it got them off his back. Anyway, he knew that was what she told the guys she’d sporadically dated after Ronnie died, that he was like her brother. As far as he could tell, it was true for her.

He didn’t really need a roommate anymore. His job at Mercury Labs more than covered the expenses of the house he’d inherited from his grandma, not like when he’d been in school and only able to work part-time at a garage.

But Caitlin had four months of residency still to go, and besides her massive school loans, the hospital where she worked was only a few miles away, close enough to drive in five minutes. Or for Cisco to go pick her up when she was so tired she couldn’t move. 

Anyway, he liked having her there. He’d never lived anywhere alone and he didn’t want to start now.

He didn’t like to think about what would happen when she was done with her residency and got a job somewhere else.

She smiled at him. “Okay. Let’s do a roomie TV night.””

He smiled back, bumping her with his shoulder. “Excellent. Chinese or pizza?”

“Chinese,” she said.

“Great, that means the show is my pick.” He grabbed the remote and turned the TV on.

She gasped. “Dirty pool, Cisco. I’m not watching Game of Thrones.”

“Please,” he said, flicking through Netflix. “You’ll fall asleep again.” That particular incident still offended him to his mortal soul.

She rolled her eyes and peeled herself off the couch. “Did I leave my purse in the kitchen?”

“Front hall,” he called out.

His phone buzzed again, and he pulled it out. A string of texts from Barry stacked up on the screen, his friend baffled that he’d ghosted in the middle of their conversation.

He tapped out, _Actually, do you mind if I cancel on you guys?_

_Caitlin’s got the night off for once and we need roomie time_

**Holy shit they let her out?**

_IKR It’s been forever_

**Yeah it’s okay**

_Have fun w o me_

**So, are you going to talk to her?**

_No I’m going to ignore her all night as we hang out watching TV and eating chow mein_

_Duh I’m going to talk to her_

**You know what I mean**

**TALK to her**

He stared at the phone. Thought about pretending he didn’t know what Barry meant.

He tapped back, _No_

**!!!!!!**

_Wrong time_

_I told you_

**If you’re not careful she’s going to move out or get with someone else and you’ll have lost your chance**

He put the phone away without answering and kept browsing Netflix.

She wasn’t done with residency. She’d had a breakup not even a month ago. Not to mention, she was living in his house. If he confessed that he’d been having not-brotherly feelings for her for awhile now and she didn’t feel the same way, it had the potential to make things really weird and awful. And what if she felt like she had to date him to keep living there?

He’d rather keep pretending to be just her good buddy Cisco forever then make her feel like that.

“Orange chicken or sweet and sour?” she asked him, scowling at her phone as she came back in.

“Sweet and sour,” he decided. “And crab puffs.”

She held her phone out to show him that crab puffs were the first thing on the order. “I know what you like,” she said.

“Yeah, you do,” he grinned at her. “And I do too. Which is why we’re watching Parks and Rec.”

She smiled at him. She looked tired and frazzled, but her smile lit up her face. “I need a shower first, though. I smell like the hospital.”

“Yeah, I didn’t want to mention it … ”

She pretended to swat him, then checked her phone again. “As soon as this order goes through.” She sighed. “It’s so slow lately.”

“Get a new phone.”

“I’m waiting to upgrade until after - ”

“Residency,” he said along with her. “It doesn’t help that you have, like, half a kilobyte of spare storage on there.”

“I need all those things. Finally!” she said as the confirmation popped up. “Okay, about forty-five minutes.”

“Great. Gimme that, I’ll clean it out.”

She clutched it to her heart. “You’ll delete everything.”

“Your pictures are backed up,” he said patiently. She hoarded pictures and videos like a very specific kind of dragon. “I set up your cloud storage myself. And how the hell many apps do you have?”

“I use them!”

“Okay fine, if you’ve used them in the past month, I won’t delete them. But you don’t need six months’ worth of podcasts.”

She pouted a little. “I’ll listen to them all.”

“When? After residency? You can download them again.” He wiggled his fingers. “Give.”

She handed it over. “But don’t touch Sawbones,” she ordered, already on her way to her room and the attached bathroom.

“Got it,” he called out, already busy deleting. “Sawbones is sacrosanct.”

It took him about five minutes to free up several gigs of space. Since he was in there, he decided to clean up her pictures. Old screenshots, discarded selfies, random stuff he was pretty sure she’d texted him. It was all backed up anyway.

He found several selfies they’d taken together and sat smiling at them for a little while. He had most of the same ones saved, downloaded from wherever she’d posted them.

He scrolled through the set again and realized there were some of his, taken with his phone and posted online, which meant that she’d downloaded them.

Hmmm.

Well.

They were pretty good pictures.

A text popped up, with her ex-boyfriend’s name at the top. _I had a lovely time the other night_

His eyebrows shot up.

As far as he knew, Julian was still in England and would be for at least another six months. So what was this “other night” he spoke of? Had they sexted? A little post-breakup virtual hanky-panky?

“I don’t want to know,” he muttered, which was a lie. He kind of wanted to know.

Okay, he really wanted to know.

_Sorry! That was meant for someone else_

_But now I’ve bothered you, how are you doing?_

“Oho,” Cisco said as all came clear. He calculated the time difference between Central City and London and felt justified in calling bullshit. Unless Julian was booty-calling someone at about four in the morning, this was the kind of idea that sounded really, really good when you were very tired and more than slightly drunk.

Impulsively, he swiped to open the conversation and smirked at the keyboard, fingers ready to call the other man on his nonsense.

Then he thought - _no, that’s a terrible idea and Caitlin will be furious._ If she wanted to call him out, she should get the pleasure of it herself. Reluctantly, he swiped down to close the keyboard.

That brought more of the text conversation down to fill the screen. It was pretty dull stuff - have a nice trip, take care of yourself. He scrolled a little and found stilted queries about whether he’d found a hoodie of hers, about whether she still had his charger. Very, very polite and a little bit pained. Breakup stuff.

It had been an amicable breakup as far as he knew. “Long-distance is too hard,” Caitlin had said, packing a half-empty box of tea, a T-shirt, and the debated phone charger into a paper grocery sack. “Especially with my residency and his fellowship taking up so much energy. We decided it was better to end on good terms.”

But even the nicest breakup was still a breakup, an ending, an us falling apart into a you and a me. So he wasn’t surprised at the stiff tone.

He scrolled up and found the next one back, not polite, not businesslike at all.

**I’m not doing this over text.**

It was from Caitlin. He checked the timestamp - two weeks before Julian had left. Right around the time they’d broken up.

If that didn’t sound like an about-to-break-up text …

His fingers hovered over the screen, and then he gave in to insatiable curiosity and swiped down to see what kind of dealbreaker thing Julian had said to her.

_No matter what I do, you’re never going to feel half as much for me as you do for him_

What the _fuck._

He sat staring at the text, especially the last word.

_Him._

Who was _him_?

His first thought was Ronnie. But Julian had said do, not did. Cisco had talked with Caitlin about Ronnie enough over the years for him to know that while she’d always love him and treasure his memory, that memory was folded away in her past. This sounded like current feelings, for a living man.

He tried to remember if she’d talked about any of their guy friends more often than any other. Or someone at the hospital? She didn’t mention her co-workers at the hospital much.

So who the hell was _him?_

And why hadn’t she mentioned him to Cisco?

He debated with himself, then turned off the phone to clear out the deleted things, and not incidentally, keep himself from reading more of the conversation. He was already feeling guilty for having read as much as he had.

Should he ask?

Caitlin came out of her room in pajamas, her hair damp. “How’s the patient?” she asked him, folding herself into the couch next to him.

She smelled like flowery shampoo and apple-flavored lotion. It was warm and familiar, one of his favorite smells.

He turned the phone back on and handed it back. “Think he’s gonna make it.”

She tapped in her code and opened a few things to test, then smiled at him when everything was speeded up. “Thanks. So, which season are we watching?”

He realized the Netflix screen was still up, waiting for a choice. “You pick,” he said.

“Me? Okay.” She reached for the remote next to his leg.

“So, uh,” he said as she flicked through seasons, weighing their merits. “Julian texted while I was working on your phone.”

“Julian?” she said, surprised. “What did he want?” She opened her texts and looked. “That’s weird. Did you read this?”

“Well, it popped up, so.”

She shook her head, baffled. “Do you think he’s trying to make me jealous?”

“Seems like. Are you going to answer him?”

She laughed. “No. I think he’s going to wake up in the morning and be very embarrassed.”

“How’s he doing, anyway?”

“I don’t really know. Okay, I guess. We haven’t talked much. We’re both - ”

“So busy,” he finished. “Yeah.” He fiddled with his own phone, watching as she finally chose season three. He should ask.

He shouldn’t ask.

But he had to know.

But if she’d wanted him to know, she would have damn well told him.

He found himself saying, “I have to confess something.”

She widened her eyes at him as Ron and Leslie bickered on-screen. “You deleted Sawbones?”

“No, I told you I’d leave it alone. You’ve still got like twenty episodes. No, uh - ” He dug his fingers into the upholstery. “I kind of read more of your texts with Julian.”

She frowned at him. “Why?”

“I - you’re right. I shouldn’t have. But I was in there anyway and - I’m sorry.”

She shrugged, tucking her legs up under herself. “I’m sure they were very exciting.”

“A little,” he said. “Caitlin, why didn’t you tell me?”

A split second of echoing silence, and then she said, “Tell you what?”

“Why you really broke up with him.”

Color seeped away from her cheeks. She turned her head to stare fixedly at the TV. “I told you. The distance and we were busy and - ”

“And you’re in love with someone else.”

“Oh god,” she whispered. “You read back that far?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Why is this the first I’m hearing about it?”

“I - I couldn’t say,” she said. “Not to you. I couldn’t.” She covered her face with her hands. “Do you want me to move out?”

“Move out?” he almost shouted. “What the hell? Why would I ever want you to move out?”

She dropped her hands to stare at him. Her eyes were wet and red. “It would be so awkward if I stayed.”

“Why?”

The chirpy, peppy theme music started, jarring in the taut silence. He grabbed the remote from her lap and hit pause.

“Caitlin,” he sad. “Why would it be awkward? Who are you in love with?”

Her eyes went very wide. “You - you didn’t see the whole conversation.”

“No,” he said.

She bit her lip. “Someone. From the hospital. You don’t know him.”

He looked at her hard. “Caitlin Snow, you are the worst liar I’ve ever met.”

Her pale face flushed with color. “I’m not lying.”

“That’s exactly what you say every time you bluff at poker.” He nodded at her phone, now clutched tightly in her hand. “If I’d read farther back, what would I have seen? Who was Julian talking about?”

“Someone from the hospital,” she said stubbornly, getting to her feet. “You know what, I think I should get a head start on my laundry.”

“But,” he said. “Wait. What? You’re just going to run away?”

She stopped in the hall, not looking back at him. “I need you to not push me on this, Cisco,” she said evenly.

A moment later, the door to her room shut with a snap.

He stared blankly at the TV screen for a moment. Then he got up and went to her door. 

It looked blank and stolid, about as informative as Caitlin’s stiff back when she’d told him not to push her.

He scowled and raised his hand to knock.

His hand froze, and then he pulled it back and laced his fingers together on the top of his head, letting out a long whoosh of a breath.

Was he crazy?

Had Julian meant him in that text thread?

Or did he just want Caitlin’s mystery guy to be himself so bad that he was talking himself into believing it was?

He had been pushing, like she’d said. What was going through her mind? What could he say to get her to let down those walls of hers? Because he’d seen what happened when people tried to just bash through. It didn’t end well. 

The doorbell rang, and he jolted. The food. Shit. Had it been forty-five minutes already?

After he’d taken the food and paid the kid, he took everything to the kitchen and unpacked the bag, setting out square boxes, opening one after another to figure out which was his and which was hers. 

His brain churned around and around, but no matter what clever things he came up with, he kept returning to the one thing that felt like it would work. Only one thing that would get her to open up.

But what if he was wrong about who she was really in love with? Could he handle that?

Far away, Caitlin’s door clicked open. He forced himself to stay where he was, snapping a pair of chopsticks apart and poking at his sweet and sour chicken.

She walked through the kitchen with a laundry basket on her hip.

“Food’s here,” he said.

Her eyes flickered toward him, then the boxes lined up on the counter. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll just get the first load in.” She ducked her head and continued on to the laundry room. The washer door clanged, and cloth rustled as she started loading it.

He fished a piece of bell pepper out of the box and lifted it to his mouth, but his stomach felt like a whirlpool. He dropped it back in the box, his heart slamming against his ribs. He opened his mouth a couple of times, just to close it again.

There was a click, and then water started whooshing into the washing machine. In a moment, she was going to come out here again and he was going to have to say this to her face. And he didn’t know if he had the guts for that.

“You know,” he called out, “I didn’t tell you, but I was pretty happy when you broke up with Julian.”

Silence.

“Not because I don’t like him, or because he was bad for you, or anything. He was an okay guy, Julian, and he treated you mostly pretty good. It’s just that every time I saw you holding his hand, or kissing him, or - “ He swallowed. “Or going to your room together, it reminded me that, uh. That you were with him. And more importantly, you weren’t with me.”

He looked up. Caitlin stood in the door between the laundry room and the kitchen, looking at him. Her eyes were huge and her face was pale.

“And I wanted to be with you,” he finished.

She swallowed hard. “But I’m like your sister. You say that all the time.”

“And I’m like your brother,” he said. “Which you say all the time. But who are we saying it to, Caitlin? Because I’m mostly saying it to people I’m dating, to keep them from being weirded out that we live together and you’re basically my favorite person.”

She nodded. “Me too.”

“Julian didn’t believe you, did he?” He had a balloon in his stomach now, instead of a whirlpool, blowing up wide, pushing his heart up into his throat. 

She shook her head, very slowly. “No. And he - he wasn’t wrong.”

He licked his desert-dry lips. “So it was me you were fighting about?”

“I have so little free time,” she said. “And he always thought that he should come first in my priorities when I did get a night off. He hated it that you did.”

He remembered how she’d always waited to hear what he was doing before telling him that she was going to Julian’s place, and how their more scheduled dates were always on his D&D night, or when he was going to a party. He’d always thought that was to take advantage of the empty house.

“Hard to blame him, I guess."

“I didn’t realize how I felt when I started dating him,” she said. “I really did like him. Just - like he said. Not enough.”

Poor Julian. He’d come in second all the time; no wonder he’d snapped at her over text.

Cisco was finding it hard to feel too much pity for the other guy, though. After all, if he hadn’t snapped, Caitlin wouldn’t have broken up with him, and she wouldn’t be here in this kitchen, drifting closer in soft little kitten steps.

“You said you wanted to be with me,” she said. “Is that past tense?”

He set the box of sweet and sour chicken down on the counter, gripping the edge of it so he wouldn’t just reach out and grab her. 

“Present tense,” he said. “I want to be with you. But I told myself I couldn’t make it weird, what with you paying me rent and all.”

She put her hand on his chest. His heart thudded so hard he wondered if it would just burst out and land in her palm. “I can move out,” she said, mouth quirking. “I made the offer.”

“The hell you will,” he said, and pulled her close to press his lips to hers.

* * *

They did end up eating all the food. Eventually.

They didn’t watch any TV, though.

FINIS


End file.
